Every few years a new “conversion crisis” rocks Israel and the Diaspora – as Yogi Berra remarked, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” And yet, this time perhaps there’s a new twist?
I cannot confess to understanding the law proposed recently in Israel. On the one hand, it appears to turn over greater control to the Chief Rabbinate – and one would expect this to result in making the conversion process more strict – while on the other hand, the proposal seems aimed at easing the conversion of many Russian immigrants, a task that will clearly not be accomplished by making conversion ever more difficult.
That Efrat’s Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, a leader of Modern Orthodoxy, has expressed support for some version of the law, as helping the integration of Russian immigrants, suggests we at least ought to consider the motivations. The questionable religious status of such a large group of Israeli citizens has been recognized as a problem for years now.